


:-]

by beenomorph



Category: Battleborn (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, bblgbtweek, its gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 02:10:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8826250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beenomorph/pseuds/beenomorph
Summary: these are the three request minifics I wrote in honor of bblgbt week.





	1. kissing is stupid

**Author's Note:**

> none of these have been beta read so prepare for the worst

“Hey, can you like, be still for a second?” Oscar Mike said, scrambling over the expanse that was his boyfriend’s back as it rhythmically rose and fell with his push-ups. Oscar smiled, the sight unobstructed by his long-since discarded helmet, the word new and foreign and exciting in his mind- he’d never had a _boyfriend_ before.

He’d had bros, of course, bros of the highest caliber in and out of the UPR- most of which accepted his Bro Certificates without even throwing them away. He’d had _crushes_ before, sure, he seemed to have a crush on a new guy every week. He liked crushes, he liked the soft feeling of affection that fluttered in his chest.

Only, not this time. Not this one. It’d been steady and warm in his stomach, it made his face warm and his hands shake and it was kinda terrible, if he was being honest, but it was also kinda incredible, and he couldn’t say he wanted it to stop any time soon.

“ _Monty_!” He groaned, wrapping his arms around Montana’s neck-- perhaps the only part of Montana he could actually get his arms all the way around. Montana responded in an instant, reaching a massive arm up to pluck the little clone from his back. He sat up, holding Oscar in his arms, and Oscar felt momentarily blinded by the brightness of that smile, and his dazed expression was quickly replaced with a mirroring grin, revealing his sharp teeth. Montana laughed in response, lifting Oscar up to press a sloppy kiss to his cheek, ruffling his hair with one of his large fingers. 

“What is it, little buddy?” Montana said, using Oscar’s moment of endeared stupor to remove his hat and place it on his partner’s head.

“Gimmie a second!” Oscar laughs, putting his hands on Montana’s shoulders. “Listen, Monty, you know how we’re like, you know…” Oscar looks away, he can sense his face getting red, can feel his gills getting hot under his collar, “We’re like, you know, we were best friends _before_ , and we’re still best friends! But now, it’s like, we’re boyfriends?” He barely contained a giggle at the word, giddy and ecstatic and stomach-wrenchingly nervous all at once, an emotional cocktail that was both wonderful and dreadful. It was pretty poetic, he thought, something he’d definitely be writing about later.

Montana nodded, and Oscar had no idea _how_ he managed to do it but that dumb, beautiful, incredible grin just got even beautifuler and incredibler. That was less poetic, he thought, but damn if it weren’t true. 

“ _Duh_ , of course I know about that, Mikey. I was _there_.” he jokes, though in good nature- his voice gentler than it usually was.

“Yeah, yeah, I know! So was I!” Oscar took a deep breath, steeling his nerves, and said, “Alright, listen, I’m gonna kiss you now.” Montana opened his mouth to say something, and Oscar quickly covered the other’s mouth with his hands because if he said something sappy and sweet right now Oscar would just get embarrassed and stuttery and awkward and totally lose his nerve. “But like! Let’s just say, hypothetically, I’d never kissed anybody and have no idea what I’m doing,” the last sentence comes out in a blur, mumbled and quick to hide his own embarrassment, “You gotta, y’know, hypothetically promise not to make fun of me or whatever, right?”

Behind his hands, Montana nodded enthusiastically, almost shaking Oscar right off, eyes filled with excitement and affection and making Oscar’s heart beat like a million times a second. 

He pulls his hands away quickly, squeezes his eyes closed, jerks his head forwards, and misses. His mouth connects solidly with the corner of Montana’s mouth-- there was very little mouth-to-mouth contact and a whole lotta mouth-to-beard contact. 

“Mikey,” Montana says, chuckling when Oscar pulls back, but he’s silenced.

“Hold up, hold up, I’ve totally got this--” Mike tries again, this time rewarded with the unpleasant sensation of their teeth clacking together, and he backs away in surprise. Montana is patient, allowing a few more awkward and instantly aborted attempts at kissing from Oscar before the clone pushes away for a final time.

“Oh my God, this sucks,” he huffs, bringing his hands up to cover his own face this time, red from embarrassment. 

“Mikey,” Montana hums again, taking those little hands in his comparatively huge ones, smiling despite the pout fixed on the other’s lips.

“Kissing is stupid,” Oscar responds, with finality, refusing to meet Montana’s gaze.

“You liked it when I kissed you, earlier,” Montana teases in response, leaning in to place a little kiss on the fin on Oscar’s cheek. Oscar growled a little, mostly to combat the smile threatening to form on his face, 

“It’s not stupid when you do it.” he said, resolve breaking as he giggled- Montana kissed his other cheek, and his beard _tickled_ , goddamn it.

“You just need practice,” Montana said, his voice full of determination that way it got before he did something really stupid on a mission. 

“Wuh,” Oscar said as Montana pressed a gentle kiss to his lips- no teeth clacking, no missing or fumbling or anything. He leaned back for a moment, grinning as Oscar took a moment to process _what had just happened_ , before leaning back in. This time, the kiss was longer. Montana moved slow, but firm, hooking a finger under Oscar’s chin to pull him closer, and Oscar responded in earnest, hands reaching up to tangle in Montana’s hair, and, yeah, he was definitely reconsidering that stance on kissing now.

When Montana finally pulled away, that same grin was back on his face, and Oscar had this strange feeling like he’d been had.

“ _So…?_ ” Montana hummed, eyebrows wiggling playfully. Oscar rolled his eyes, pulling his hat off and pushing it right back down over Montana’s smug face.   



	2. necessitated cuddles

"‘Ey, Foxtrot,” Pendles voice rose groggily through layers of blankets, “Anyone ever tell you you’re a livin’ space heater?” His legs, free of their bindings, coiled loosely around Whiskey’s legs as he pulled himself closer, nuzzling his head into the warmth of the other’s chest.  


“You know, you’d be surprised.” Whiskey responded, resting his head against the cool wall behind him. The pair were coiled beneath all the blankets they could get their hands on in the corner of their shared room, Whiskey doing what he could to help his cold-blooded companion keep the cold away in the wake of central heating going offline.

Stuff went wrong on the Fortune’s Favor, like, all the time. She was a fine enough flagship-- or, well, she had been in her heyday. While she could still give half of the UPR fleet a run for its money, the point still stood that half of her internals were held together with duct tape and wishful thinking. (Something that happens, I guess, when your main engineers are Toby and Whiskey Foxtrot.) But, anyways, that didn’t mean that things didn’t go wrong every so often. Nobody really thought much of this one- they’d had to punch it after a semi-successful raid, and while diverting the power to their engines _had_ gotten them the hell outta dodge, it proved to be far from their brightest idea when they’d realized the power surge knocked out their primary generator.

It was an easy fix, though, and with the adrenaline from the raid dying down, nobody saw an immediate need to set to repairs, as the most important systems still functioned on the backup generator-- the artificial gravity, for example, and the oxygen pumps. 

The main lights were out, though, the halls lit softly by the emergency lights powered by the backup generator. Whiskey didn’t mind, not really- he’s sure that Reyna and Shayne were the only ones around with any trouble seeing in low light, anyways. Reyna didn’t seem to mind, though, and Aurox glowed like a damn spotlight, so Shayne didn’t seem to mind either. The water filtration was on the fritz, too- but that wasn’t a huge deal. It would be, of course, if it weren’t repaired soon, but everyone could wait ‘til tomorrow to get a shower, and they had separate stores for drinking water. The heating was out, too, and he doubted anyone who wanted a shower would want a cold one.

Some of the doors weren’t working, either- Whiskey realized that when he ran face-first into the usually-automatic door to his bunk, praying that security feeds were offline too and there would be no surviving record of the incident. He was surprised at the disarray that met him there, and even though the bunk was almost always in a sense of disarray, Whiskey was fairly sure he hadn’t torn all the sheets and blankets off of every bunk and thrown them in a pile on the floor before they’d gone off to the raid. 

When the haphazard floor-pile moved, the shifting of blankets revealing the yellow nose of the Rogues’ newest charge, forked tongue tasting the air, Whiskey nearly jumped out of his skin. The reality of the situation hit him like a ton of bricks-- the heat was out, and Pendles was cold-blooded. “Oh, shit,” he said, eloquently, “You OK in there?”

“Y’know,” Pendles’ voice emerged from within the bundle, his usually calm and chipper voice sounding much more slowed and sluggish, “Y’know,” he repeated, “It sure is bloody cold out there, isn’t it?” 

It hadn’t taken long for Whiskey to join the Pendles pile, and it hadn’t taken Pendles long to realize that Whiskey kicked out warmth like nobody’s business.

Whiskey thought it was weird, at first- he’d never seen Pendles not standing upright, or without the bindings on his legs and arms that allowed him to do so. He wasn’t surprised by Pendles leaning against his chest as the pair got comfortable, but his noodly legs coiling around Whiskey’s did give him a bit of a start.

“Sorry,” Pendles chuckled, not sounding very sorry at all. 

“Sure you are,” Whiskey responded, voice dripping with sarcasm, but that didn’t stop him from rubbing slow circles across the narrow expanse of Pendles’ back, hand sliding underneath the fabric of his hoodie. He looked up towards the ceiling, hoping distantly that Pendles couldn’t hear the thumping of his heart from where he rested against his chest.

On his back, Pendles’ prosthetic hand traced the links of metal going down his back. It was kinda soothing, to be honest- his tentacle arm curled lazily around his waist as his prosthetic continued to explore, and Whiskey found his eyelids getting heavy.

“How’d you get this one?” Pendles asks, tracing the outline of a  crisscross of particularly deep scars right beneath his shoulder blade.

“Ugh. Got caught on the wrong side of a pair of ronins.”  

Pendles hummed quietly as he talked, his own eye fluttering, enjoying the vibrations rising from Whiskey’s chest as he spoke.

“I’ve always wondered about these ones,” Pendles said, fingers trailing higher, touching the darker marks that resided closer to Whiskey’s neck. “They really draw the eye, y’know? I always thought, ‘there’s gotta be a story around those.’”

Whiskey laughed at that, successfully jostling Pendles, “You want the truth?” He looked back down, and Pendles looked back at him expectantly. “Hell if I know.” 

Pendles rolled his eye, a smart remark hot on his tongue, but he stopped when Whiskey started gently tracing the larger scales patterning his back with the tips of his claws. His words melted into a low hum as he deflated, curling in a bit closer.

The sudden loud thrum that filled the air broke their calm. Whiskey started once more as Pendles tightened his grip around him in shock, the lights flickering on as they heard the generator distantly sputtering back to life.

“Oh,” Whiskey said, clearing his throat awkwardly.

“Guess Tobes got the generator on.” Pendles said, almost reluctantly. Silence drifted between them a moment as the room started to warm up once more, signifying the end of their necessitated cuddles.

“We…” Whiskey muttered, uncharacteristically awkward, “Don’t have to go right away, y’know.” He spared a look back down at Pendles, expecting the Roa to unwind himself from Whiskey and saunter off into the recesses of the ship at any moment, instead meeting the full force of Pendles’ grin.

“That doesn’t sound too bad, provided you keep rubbin’ my back like that, Foxtrot.” he chirped, and Whiskey grinned right back in response.

Stuff went wrong on the Fortune’s Favor all the time, he thought, but stuff seemed to go right just as often.

“I think I can manage that, Lakonna.”   



	3. mandatory bedtime

ISIC didn’t sleep. It wasn’t so much that he  _didn’t_ , it was that he  _couldn’t_ \- and even if he could, he’s sure he wouldn’t want to. The closest thing he had to sleeping was the standby mode he activated during diagnostic scans or routine maintenance- and while he suffered a 34.6% drop in efficiency, at least he didn’t have to go fully unconscious to do his business. Organics as a whole weren’t so good with that whole ‘efficiency’ thing, were they?   


But, now, Nova’s halls were dark-- the lights weren’t completely off, no, too many of the ship’s occupants without good enough vision to see in the darkness were prone to wandering around at odd hours. The halls were dark for a _reason_ , though, one everyone seemed to conveniently forget- Solus was saved, after all, and with people able to plan for a life longer than the span of a couple weeks, they had a good reason to realign their circadian rhythm. (Plus, irregular sleeping schedules made it hard for everyone to stay in top shape. Honestly, ISIC is pretty sure this whole lights out thing was just because Ghalt was tired of people falling asleep during missions.)

So, it was nighttime aboard Nova, even though there technically wasn’t a _daytime_ to begin with. And nighttime meant that everyone was asleep, and everyone being asleep meant that ISIC was _bored_.

He’d been wasting time for the past twenty minutes after lights out. Regular maintenance- you know, diagnostic scans, clearing junk files, entirely reorganizing all of the data in his processor five different times by five different alphabets before reverting it back to its original structure. ISIC was jolted from his thoughts by the faintest of knocks at the doorway to the room that had been deemed ISIC’s and subsequently cluttered with his backup frames. 

“Hey,” Oscar Mike whispered, as much as he _could_ whisper, ducking his head through the doorframe. His helmet was off, two good eyes reflecting in the low light, short hair mussed from sleep. “Are you awake in here?” 

Inside his chassis, ISIC’s skull lit up its ghostly blue, and he saw the tension dissolve in Oscar’s shoulders from across the room. 

“Oh, good, I totally couldn’t tell which of these had you in it.” he continues, wandering further into the room without permission, gesturing to the littering of backup frames that he navigated between with a practiced ease. ISIC wanted to say he minded- wanted to be able to say that he shot at the ground at the clone’s feet and banished him from his personal quarters, wanted to be able to say that seeing Mike waddle up in his cocoon of blankets made him feel anything other than a weird and unidentifiable, though not entirely unpleasant, flutter throughout his systems.

“Hey buddy!” He chirped, voice upbeat as usual as Mike flopped down without ceremony beside him. His face was illuminated by ISIC’s avatar, painting him in a soft blue. “Quick question: What are you doing in my quarters instead of participating in your new mandatory bedtime?” Mike shrugged, making a noncommittal noise before burrowing deeper into his blankets.

“M’not tired yet. I don’t gotta sleep as much as everyone else,” he said. ISIC could confirm this as true with a rudimentary search- RDC troops _did_ require less sleep than the average organic as they were designed to be, in general, much more efficient than the average Galahadrim. “It just gets… Boring, I guess.” Mike paused, squinting up at ISIC’s avatar. “Y’know, ISIC, if I didn’t know you better I’d think you were w--”

“You didn’t answer my question, fella!” ISIC hums, denying him his next statement, prodding him with a large, golden finger. “What are you doing in _my_ quarters?” he repeats, ghastly skull hovering closer to the glass that separated them.

Mike rolled his eyes, rolling forwards on his knees to tap his forehead against the glass gently.

“Well, _duh_ ,” he says, closing the eye on his forehead in the approximation of a wink, “I, like, wanted to hang out with you, or whatever.” 

For just a moment, an almost imperceptible amount of time, ISIC’s skull blinked out of existence in surprise before returning distinctly pixelated around the edges, a chuckle somewhere between giddy and nervous bubbling forth from his vocal processor.

“Don’t make this weird,” he chuckled, though his voice had no bite. 

“You know you like it,” Mike responded, barking out a laugh as he settled back down into his blanket nest.

ISIC pondered his statements as they played on loop in his head, thinking it strange that anyone… Actually, genuinely sought him out for companionship. He couldn’t think of the last time someone had, in all honesty, wanted his company, or desired his friendship. Considering himself among the people who enjoyed said company was stranger still.

With the way Mike was scooting in, grin on his tired face, leaching the excess heat ISIC’s frame kicked off, ISIC considered the fact that friendship might not be _all_ the other wanted from him. 

And, strangely enough, ISIC found that he kinda liked that. 

It had been a long time since ISIC had liked something that didn’t even tangentially involve murder, to be honest. The feeling felt new and nostalgic all at the same time, and man, ISIC _liked_ it. He liked feeling _wanted_ , wanted in a way beyond his use as a worker or information source. Of all the people he expected to catch his attention- or, as it were, to catch the attention of- Oscar Mike had to be at the bottom of the list.

Though, here they were. Mike’s breathing had slowed, his eyes drooping but not falling closed, lulled into relaxation by the quiet thrum of ISIC’s engine and the occasional hiss of steam.

“You know what?” ISIC said, slinging his great arm over the clone’s much smaller form-and his laugh this time was genuine, shaking through his frame and making him feel warm all over (but not warm like he was overheating, warm like he’d just disconnected from the charging port and was buzzing with a bit of excess charge.) “I think you just might be right.”   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y do i always write om/isic where om is sleepy


End file.
